North American Network Operators Group

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RE: Email Complexes

  • From: Hosman, Ross
  • Date: Tue Sep 14 17:42:32 2004

Let me see if I can explain your entire email.

Ensuring that email flows freely between our mail complex and other top mail
provider complexes is a support issue correct. Actually setting up the
system to monitor and to ensure the support people get the data they need is
operations/engineering.

We like automating a lot of our procedures as our mail complex isn't staffed
24/7. Right now we have a script that monitors incoming mail sent from
probes across the us. It monitors how long it takes the email to first hit
the IronPort's, then how long it takes to hit the Brightmail, then how long
it takes to hit the MTA's. Our script uses pop3 to grab the email and parse
the headers we send from the probes (or in this case from the complex to the
pop accounts). Yes I do realize some are webmail (AOL, MSN, Gmail), but even
a lot of the webmail providers do have pop3 servers.

Our intent here is not not only verify that the email got there but that it
got there in a reasonable time (lets face it email is becoming a more
imporant part of life/business today).

As fair as teaching the support guys to go look at the mail queue, would you
honestly want them to be doing that? We have over 65 mail machines and
should I trust them with checking them every 10 min? Since we are not
staffed 24/7 what happeneds if we have all gone home? The way we have it
setup if the mail never reaches the complex tier-1 gets a page, 15 minutes
later if the problem still isn't solved tier-2 gets a page. I believe
automating the system rather then trutsing a staff member to check it and to
pray that it dosen't break during the night is a much better way of doing
it.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of
Mark Foster
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 4:04 PM
To: Hannigan, Martin
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Email Complexes



I find it interesting that you'd like pop3 access to a bunch of listed
*webmail* providers. Who provide access via the web - NOT pop3.

I also agree with the below statement - your mail queues themselves will
provide far more accurate information.

The issue of 'successful mail delivery' would be a support issue, not an
operations issue, as long as you as an operations staffer can verify that
your mailserver is not holding the mail for undue periods. (Mail doesnt
have a delivery SLA in general, after all.)

And if your support staff need offsite mail accounts to verify delivery
delay times, they should be able to purchase them or otherwise obtain
them, and keep a database of mail account access details that they can use
*on demand*.  This would of course entail them becoming customers and
footing the regular monthly bill, or whatever.

In every ISP i've ever worked for, all we've needed to do is verify that
we're delivering the mail to the advertised MX in a timely fashion, and
our responsibility ends at that point.

Outside of the usual responsibilities of a good ISP - like providing
responsive abuse/security staff, like providing a valid [email protected] contact :-)
This would be one of the primary reasons your mail doesn't get accepted,
and prevention is better than cure...

So in all honesty - if your company wants to extend its monitoring-ability
outside of its own network to those of other providers, it should do so in
the 'usual fashion' - sign up.   How is this something that yourself as an
operations employee got involved in anyway, as it strikes me as a support
issue?

- Mark.

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, Hannigan, Martin wrote:

>
>
>
> Ross,
>
> There are a lot of knowledgeable people on this list [tier 3].
>
> Why can't you already tell if you aren't getting through to
> major providers? Wouldn't your queues backup, or are you being
> blocked and the messages are being rejected and you are trying
> to track that?
>
> -M<
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of
> Hosman, Ross
> Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 2:41 PM
> To: '[email protected]'; Roy
> Cc: [email protected]
> Subject: RE: Email Complexes
>
>
>
> Your right this isn't my department and it's not my place to tell them how
> to do their job. If Roy would like to send me a valid abuse complaint I'll
> make sure to forward it on or even walk it over to the abuse department
> supervisor.
>
> I would also like to say I'm suprised at how many people have been
attacking
> me on/off the list for asking a simple question. I'm just trying to ensure
> people are able to recieve/send mail from/to charter's mail complex. I
> didn't think asking for some help would be a big deal (as I thought there
> might be some people on the list from the companies that were
knowledgeable
> instead of having to deal with typical tier-1 support).
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Bradford [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 1:31 PM
> To: Roy
> Cc: Hosman, Ross; [email protected]
> Subject: RE: Email Complexes
>
>
> Come on... what is this....  Ross doesn't have the ability to put more
> "clueful" people in abuse, he's prolly an engineer like you and me....
> we just want to fix the network....  why take this e-mail as a chance to
> bash Charter?
>
> Ease up,
> Paul
>
> On Tue, 2004-09-14 at 14:01, Roy wrote:
> > I suggest you concentrate some resources in your abuse department.  One
> > charter IP address hit my firewall 1617 times so far today.  Repeated
> > complaints to [email protected] just get ignored.
> >
> > According to the local newspaper, my fellow citizens consider Charter
the
> > worst company in town.
> >
> > Roy
>